The Ascent of Money - Episode 2: Human Bondage

Niall Ferguson's history of finance continues. This week, he tells the story of government bonds. Invented when the city states of Italy were fighting each other in the early Renaissance, bonds meant that instead of being taxed, citizens effectively lent money to their government to fight wars, on the assumption that the government would pay them back in due course. So was created a way to buy and sell government debt, a market that was dominated in the 19th century by the Rothschild family, whose financial weight duly helped defeat Napoleon at Waterloo.